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Saturday, August 12, 2006

The Atheist Mama watches 30 Days

I have a few guilty pleasures, one of them is getting my fix of the well written and uplifting atheist blog The Atheist Mama. This week she posted on the FX TV show, 30 Days. Based on her post, I watched the show toady (love that Tivo). The premise of this episode is for Atheist Brenda to spend 30 days with the Shores, an evangelical Christian family living in Texas. Brenda must spend 30 days with the Shores while living a Christian lifestyle. The Atheist Mama observed:

Anyway, I think what struck me the most about the show was the fact that the Christians just could not understand how in the hell a person could live without God in their lives. He didn’t understand where their morals came from, or what their purpose for living was. It seems that some Christians see no value to their lives without God. Is that the case?

I felt the show did an adequate job of juxtaposing a rational atheist and decent Christians. Although it was strange at times to fathom the problem Papa Shores had understanding how Brenda could live her live without something to believe in. A concept we atheists understand well is as mysterious to a Christian as belief in a deity is to an atheist.

I am somewhat disappointed that Brenda did not rise to the occasion when a bible study turned towards evolution. Brenda holds several degrees, including a PhD in psychology; it would have been a simple matter for her to refute some of the fundamentalist rants about evolution while interjecting that Darwinism is not a replacement for Christianity with atheists.

One thing that bothered me about this episode was that Brenda did not seem to embrace learning what it means to be a Christian in America today. Instead, the show focused on Christians reacting to atheists. I watched a second episode of 30 days, where a Christian went to live among Muslims in Dearborn Michigan. This episode featured a man who genuinely wanted to learn about the Muslim community he was living in. It was good TV, and much better than “Brenda visits the Christians”. I recommend both episodes highly.

The Atheist Mama also posted her review here.The photo was borrowed from the Atheist Mama.

2 comments:

It really was amazing to see how the Christian family could not comprehend a life without faith based belief in a deity. I was raised Christian and still believe in God, but I'm not a believer in going to church and rallying around others. My beliefs have cahnged a lot over the years, and I do not buy into creationism and a lot of Christian "pseudo science" that's out there.I felt that the atheist woman was very open-minded, but it was funny to listen to the host family. The part where the man and his daughter were on their way to pick up the atheist ladys family, and he said something to her of the effect of "be nice to them, but remember that they're going to hell" (he didn't actually say that, but it was like they had some highly contagious disease or something). That's the way Christian people think. They don't comprehend that ahtheists don't need the belief in God, they think that being an atheist automatically labels them as "anti-God", and that's not the case. It was eye-opening in terms of how close-minded and ridiculous church goers can be, and that's why I don't associate with them, they have no intention of learning truth and seeking knowledge.